S. P. WILKEN
ONE IN 1700
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
The thinking behind this assignment was that I am one of 1700 students at my school. I am one part of a bigger picture, one cog in the great machine. Using up to eleven pictures, I was meant to tell you something about myself, as a person and as a part. I hope that I succeeded in that, at least.
I discovered my message probably halfway through the assignment, and it is one of perspective. Our different opinions, feelings, and experiences form the lenses with which we view the world, and it is those lenses - those perspectives - that make us individuals. I tried to convey this message through my photos by taking them in the same spaces, yet always showing a different viewpoint or perspective - always telling a different story.
STILL LIFE: SCHOOL DAYS
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
My theme in this image is red--it is a monochromatic still life. Common, everyday objects (many of them school related) are the focuses of this image, and, as I arranged and rearranged them all, it became clear that the objects sent a message in their very existence. They are all part of a daily ritual, a never-ending routine, and the orderliness of the objects speaks to that. Then there are the stars which break the red theme, but tie into some accent colors in a few objects. The stars, to me, symbolize a break in the ritual, a little bit of disorderly fun. They are scattered, and bright, and, as stars often are, associated with dreaming. I am not happy with this image and plan to try again soon.
STILL LIFE: PERFUME
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
This is the second time I have attempted the still life project. This time, my image falls under the "Things Lost" theme. For over a decade, I have kept this glass bottle--filled with oil and flowers--and refused to break the wax seal. My mother bought when she lived in France and gave it to me when I was very young...I've always treasured it, perhaps just because it was from a time and place far away from my own, but when I asked about it, Mom didn't seem very fond of the old perfume. An unsolved mystery.
BEFORE AND AFTER
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
The goal of this assignment was to demonstrate your skills in post-production. In this first image, I'll admit that my final product wasn't everything I had hoped it would be. It was a job for Photoshop, not Lightroom. I started by cropping, centering, and rotating my image (by 1 degree). Then I started the healing and cloning process to eliminate everything in the background of the image that bothered me. I decreased the exposure and increased the contrast. I also increased the warmth in the tone quality and went over my subject and some of the background with the brush to accentuate highlights and shadows. The last thing I did was go over the sun with a brush to smooth over some blown-out spots.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
I was happier with the final product of this image in that I knew I hadn't bitten off more than I could chew. The first thing that I did was crop and rotate (by -1 degree). I then used the heal tool to erase the bit of towel in the corner which hadn't been taken out of view by the cropping. Next, I increased both the brightness and warmth in tone. The warmer tone brought out the orange in m cats fur very noticeably, and I'm not completely sure that I like that. In retrospect, I would have gone back over with a brush or isolated the color orange in the image and desaturated it. I decreased/darkened the highlights. To add depth and bring more focus to my cat, I applied a light--verging on invisible--vignette to the image. My last edit was adjusting the lux of the image.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
I was happy with the finished product of this image because the changes I made were subtle and had more to do with color adjustments rather than the actual contents of the image. The first change I made was decreasing brightness and increasing contrast--my goal was to make the yellow jacket pop against its darker background. Next I went over the image with a brush and increased clarity/sharpness and decreased color noise. To make the oranges and yellows stand out a little more, I increased warmth and saturation. I decreased the brightness of the highlights to make the highlights of the leather less distracting and increased shadows for the same reason. Finally, I applied a light vignette and adjusted the lux of the image.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
This fourth image frustrated me. Making any noticeable difference in the color scheme was next to impossible, because the oranges and blues of the fish tank were already so incredibly vibrant--the cropping is the most apparent change I made. I cropped the lower section of the image out, and rotated it on its x-axis (by 25 degrees). I then decreased the brightness and, in hopes of making the light reflecting off the scales pop more, I increased the brightness of the highlights and the darkness of the shadows. Because I had lost some of this image's shocking vividness through my other adjustments, I proceeded to increase saturation and warmth. Using the brush tool, I decreased the warmth of the silvery fish, giving them a greenish tint. Finally, I increased clarity.
REPRESENTATION PROJECT
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
My original idea for the representation project was to take pictures of my family which make light of the little things--the mundane things--that we do to conform to gender stereotypes and norms. My hope was to discover (and through that discovery, change) what me and my family were doing wrong. Upon starting to shoot, however, I quickly realized that I would need to change directions. My family wasn't backing up gender stereotypes and norms in their mundanity...they were opposing them. In the gallery above, you see my finished product: three mini series (which create one big series, my representation project) each made up of three images which focus on one of my family members. The first is my baby brother, working away, very willingly, in the kitchen. The second is my Mama, deconstructing our garage. The third is my Papa, also in the kitchen, making lunches and whistling while he works.
PASSION PROJECT
"EYES," DRAKE TAYLOR.
Sometimes a miraculous thing happens.
The body ages,
And the skin crinkles like an old plastic bag.
And even though the body fades, the soul still fights on.
And the soul comes through the eyes.
And the most crinkled, faded old people will have the deepest eyes. Sometimes deeper than any others. Their soul comes through their eyes and draws everything in.
They glow with a brilliance earned over many years,
And even though the body withers, the eyes stay bright.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
This is the final product of my passion project--the culmination of all of the work I have done over the course of this school year. This finished product is not at all what I expected it to be. I had a plan. An idea. I wanted to beautifully illustrate my own interpretation of William Ernest Henley's poem, "Madam Life's a Piece in Bloom,"--a favorite of mine. I wanted my audience to truly understand what Henley's poem said to me, I wanted them to see it as I saw it, and I wanted to do it all through videography. However, along the way and through filming, I found a different theme, a different passion. I realized that again and again and again, I was recording eyes. I was recording the smile lines and wrinkles my Mama gets when she laughs, and I was recording my brothers glazed over green ones as he watched T.V.; I was recording my Dad's furrowed brows, and the sunlight dancing in the eyes of my friends. It's true what they say--eyes are the windows to the human soul--and I love taking pictures of that humanity. That humanity is beautiful...more beautiful than William Ernest Henley's poem. So, I switched courses. I searched and searched, and I found this poem. This completely unknown poem, written by some man named Drake Taylor who nobody has ever heard of. It was perfect--it tells the story that I want to tell with my pictures: through age, through hardship, through sickness, through tiredness...we prevail. Our eyes stay bright. Our humanity shines through. The photo series I've made (meant to be the visual telling of Taylor's poem) goes like this: youngest to oldest. My models age, and they are all very different, and their environments are all very different, but their eyes are consistently, powerfully beautiful.